Unciv
Review
Please no more…
— ninjasr 2022-08-01 14:27:05
Unciv is an open-source turn-based strategy game which is a straight up copy of inspired by the Civilization series of games.
I used to occasionally play it in the past, but I stopped once I realized I wasn’t having fun.
I don’t know, nor care, if what I say can/does apply to the Civ series. This is partially because I don’t intend to play any of the Civ games. However, I am convinced the Civ games are of a better quality, from what I know.
Victory in this game lies in only one thing: population. As long as you prioritize growing your population you will win no matter what happens. Population essentially generates all the other resources you need, so once you reach a certain point you’ll start rapidly outpacing everyone else…in everything.
To achieve rapid population growth you should prioritize tech that:
- Raises population growth (obviously)
- Raises food growth
- Gives buildings that provide either
Once you unlock religions it’s even easier, as there’s a god conveniently titled ‘god of fertility’ and, later, you can choose tenets that either increase population growth or food production.
While you could get a bunch of settlers to increase your overall population (and, by extension, increase your production of everything), this isn’t actually all that needed…but I do recommend it.
Of course, this makes the game somewhat boring, since you can simply overpower the AI…or dumb players.
An older version of the game had an exploit where you could trade tech with AI. Within just 4 turns you could become the most technologically advanced civ in the world. You would then proceed to overpower the AI.
Besides this easy exploit(?)1), the combat in this game is painful, especially in the late game. Unless you’re technologically superior to your enemy, fights will take ages. Sieges of cities however, are far worse. Cities have both defense and offense - while this is nice when you’re getting attacked by barbarians, it’s annoying when you’re trying to conquer. In the late-game, due to tech, cities are indestructible fortresses, where you’re forced to shell or bomb them to hell before you send an infantry division to kill themselves to take it. Even then, you will probably lose half your army in conquest. Being technologically superior is the only reasonable way to take this. The only upside to this is that it does force you to build up before you go to war…more realistic.
I don’t like this game, and I won’t be playing it again.